The growing power of digital platforms raises the question of democratic control or at least containment. In light of the transforming impact of platforms on markets, the public sphere, elections, and employment conditions, governments, and civil society alike are demanding more transparency and...

This paper addresses the question of information filtering through the historical notion of mechanical reasoning and follows its "commercial" or "statistical" strand to the contemporary technique of Bayesian filtering. It discusses how the investigation of concrete techniques in computer and...